


Halászbástya

by singintomymouth



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 13:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singintomymouth/pseuds/singintomymouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Budapest meant to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halászbástya

He shoves her hard as the alien comes at her with whatever the hell kind of weapon it’s brandishing. She lands with a grunt, red curls flying as she pops back up a second later and shoots the one gunning for Steve.

“This is just like Budapest all over again!” Natasha calls to him as more Chitauri approach. Clint’s already killed, like, ninety of them, but they won’t stop coming and he’s just about had it. Her words strike him as strange and he wonders what the hell she could possibly be talking about.

“You and I remember Budapest very differently,” he shouts back, killing two more of those ugly bastards before he finishes the sentence.

_-_

_She sees red, breathes red. It’s on her hands and hair, staining her skin since she was a child. She was born with it and she’s sure that she’ll die with it._

_Natasha kills her first handler when she is eleven, and she is praised by his superiors. They send her to Prague and Brno and Krasnoyarsk and she kills with precision and without emotion. They suck out her feelings and humanity, cut her soul out of her heart and throw it away like trash._

_She is a composite of people. She is Natalia and Natasha and Lisette and Jenny and Elena and Yulia and Marketa and Sofiya and she grows to hate them all. They’re all mean and spiteful and rotten, but she knows no other way. She has been manufactured and made, like some horrible toy, passed around her whole life and shaped into a gruesome monster._

_She is the Big Bad Wolf because they killed Little Red Riding Hood._

_-_

_Clint Barton will greet you with a shit-eating grin that drives his superiors insane. He’s the best at what he does and he thinks he turned out pretty good for someone who grew up in the fucking circus._

_When Director Fury sends him to Anadyr to take out the Black Widow, he has no qualms with it._

_However, when the time comes to send an arrow through her heart, he freezes. He knows what she’s done, he’s read her file. It’s appalling and stunning and could make a grown man weep. But he also knows she was trained to do this since before she could make decisions for herself, and for the first time, he can’t bring himself to follow orders. He sends his arrow into her thigh instead and brings her back to S.H.I.E.L.D., where he catches a world of trouble for it. He isn’t too concerned, though._

_What’re they going to do, fire him?_

_-_

_When she wakes up in the hospital bed, he is there, waiting for her. Her thigh throbs and she remembers the arrow he sent through her. Remembers the slightest bit of remorse she’d seen in his eyes right before he’d loosed it and remembers thinking how that remorse made him weak. And then she was down and something was spreading through her veins that made her feel like she was falling down a rabbit hole and she hates herself for being so stupid._

_He says nothing to her as she slowly sits up and studies him. His nose has been broken a few times and his hair is cropped close to his scalp. His hands are scarred and his eyes are brown and she’s sitting where she vowed to never end up._

_“I was supposed to kill you, you know,” he says casually, leaning forward. His voice is rough, but not from disuse._

_“Why didn’t you?” she spits, but she’s genuinely curious. She yanks her wrists against her restraints, wondering if she can slip them. She can’t._

_He shrugs._

_In that moment, she hates him._

_-_

_She isn’t allowed to leave S.H.I.E.L.D. for the first two weeks that she is there, and she doesn’t have contact with anyone other than S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Fury, Agent Phil Coulson, and her savior, Agent Barton. She likes Agent Coulson only because she’s heard that he sends Agent Barton on lousy missions for no apparent reason._

_Agent Barton returns from São Paulo after those two weeks and is less than pleased to find out that Agent Romanova has been assigned to him. She’s not thrilled either, but she takes pleasure in his discomfort._

_He brings clothes to her and tells her that she can work for the side of good or go back to Russia, where they want her brains to decorate an alley._

_She picks grudgingly._

_He hands her black sweatpants and a black tank top and she strips off her hospital gown before he has completely turned around because it’s just a body and skin and she doesn’t care._

_She follows him silently down to the gym where he bests her each time they spar, but she tells herself that it’s only because of her nearly-healed leg and not because he’s better than she is._

_She hates him for that too._

_-_

_The Fisherman’s Bastion is called something unpronounceable with an H in Hungarian. It was probably once quiet and beautiful but now the steps are spattered with blood and Clint’s pretty sure he saw brains decorating the cobblestone street as they raced into the fray._

_It’s robots again._

_They aren’t Stark’s, but Clint wishes they were because at least Stark could end this quickly. They’re big and ugly and loud and they’ve decided that the Danube is the perfect place to start massacring civilians. He doesn’t know whose they are. All he knows is that they have to be stopped and he and Romanoff are there to do that. They’ve already taken out three dozen or so, but they keep coming._

_She’s wary of him but he’s smart and efficient. Even if he talks too much, it’s okay because she rarely speaks. He calls her_ Sunshine _and_ Darlin’ _and she wants to choke the life out of him. So she calls him_ Barton _and_ Mudak _and smiles viciously because he doesn’t speak Russian._

_This is their fourth mission together. She doesn’t like answering to him because she doesn’t need a babysitter and she doesn’t like Director Fury, but what choice does she have? She supposes she should be grateful that Barton didn’t kill her, and some days she is._

_Today is not one of those days._

_She is grateful when he pushes her out of the way of some kind of laser missile she’s only seen in science fiction movies._

_She’s not grateful when he demands_ what the fuck was that, Sunshine, you took out Stephen I for no fucking reason _and she mutters_ zatk`nis _under her breath. He stares at her, pupils blown from adrenaline and she watches a vein bulge in his neck. He’s angry and she likes that. Good. She wants him to hit her, because she wants to hit him. He doesn’t know why, but he grabs her and kisses her as they’re huddled in a warehouse, surrounded by carnage and bodies and blood and guts and ashes._

_She bites down on his lip hard and she can taste metal smeared across her teeth. She punches him in the jaw and he lands hard, wiping the blood away from his mouth. Natasha shakes the sting out of her knuckles and glares at Barton._

_She hates him._

_-_

_Clint knows that his mouth is what gets him in trouble 94% of the time but he’s a smartass and that doesn’t just go away._

_Their ride back to S.H.I.E.L.D. is bone-chillingly silent. She doesn’t look at him, but he looks at her, feels his lip throb, and he grins to himself._

_The other 6% of the time is because he antagonizes._

_-_

_She’s meaner in the following days. She hits him harder on the mat, ignores him everywhere else, and asks Coulson to go on solo missions from now on. Coulson won’t allow it because she hasn’t even been there a year, and she’s smart and she could still slip away from S.H.I.E.L.D._

_So she’s stuck with Barton until God knows when._

_-_

They trudge behind their friends down the destroyed sidewalk to some restaurant Tony won’t shut up about. Clint would think that after being stuck in a fucking cave in the desert for three months would make someone lose their appetite for Middle Eastern cuisine, but apparently not.

His back is sore from landing on it, and he’s pretty sure he cracked some ribs. His head pounds from being made into a puppet and he tries to ignore the fear tugging at his brain that maybe Loki’s still there, tucked away into a corner of his brain that he won’t notice until it’s too late.

He shakes it off as best he can and studies his teammates. Natasha’s lip is split, Steve took a hit to the gut, Loki stabbed Thor, and Tony’s a mess (mostly mental though). Bruce actually looks fine, but that could be because… well, Clint doesn’t actually know why. He doesn’t limp, so that’s got to count for something.

“So how was that like Budapest?” he asks her, keeping his voice low so the others don’t overhear.

She looks up at him with a half a grin.

“Because you pushed me out of the way,” she answers, raising an eyebrow. “I thought it was obvious.”

“Oh,” Clint says. “I thought…”

“Yeah, I know what you were thinking, _Mudak_ ,” she says with a grin, nudging gently him with her shoulder. “Don’t cheapen the moment.”

 

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Mudak— asshole (Russian)  
> Stephen I— famous statue outside the Fisherman’s Bastion  
> zatk`nis— shut up (Russian)
> 
> I don't speak Russian at all, this is what the internet told me.
> 
> Any and all feedback/criticism is welcome and much appreciated!


End file.
